Most people understand that coffee comes from a bean, but few know how it is cultivated to bring you your cup of morning joy. The coffee tree can grow naturally over nine meters high, though it is usually stumped shorter to conserve energy and help the harvesting process. This is because it has a better yield in a limited space.
The trees sprout green leaves, and the coffee cherries grow alongside them. On average, it takes three to four years for this plant to produce fruit. The average tree produces around four to five kilos of coffee cherries every year. This plant is grown in several different varieties, which gives the beans many different characteristics around size and flavor.
The coffee plant sprouts coffee cherries, and inside these cherries are their seeds, which are known as coffee beans. The skin of this cherry is the exocarp. It is green before it ripens until it turns yellow, pink, or red, depending on the variety. It is important to note the difference between green coffee cherries and green coffee beans, where green coffee beans are the unripened seeds inside the cherry.
After the exocarp is the mesocarp, the pulp in the cherry combines many layers of sugars, which is essential in fermentation. Beneath this are the seeds or coffee beans, technically called endosperm. There are typically two beans in a cherry.
There are more than 120 different types of coffee beans, but the two most famous varieties are the Arabica and Robusta beans. Arabica is the most popular, with its balanced flavor and aroma, while Robusta is known for its higher caffeine concentration. Single-origin coffee beans originate from a particular place and result from a type of plant growing in one place. The Jimmy Grindz Single Origin is from Finca La Palapa, Mexico, and has apple, peach, plum, cocoa, and vanilla flavors.
Instant coffee makers tend to use Robusta beans, which can have a bitter aftertaste and are preferred by people who brew their coffee fresh over the more aromatic Arabica beans. It is grown mainly for its aroma, primarily used to produce dark roasted espresso.
If you have seen a bag of ground coffee beans with “Espresso” written on it, the beans have been roasted more to a dark espresso roast. An espresso bean is roasted to espresso, whether brewed with espresso machines or Deleter Press processes. Traditionally, Arabica beans are the most popular variety for espresso and coffee.
Robusta is much easier to grow than Arabica and cheaper than coffee beans. Robusta coffee beans have a higher caffeine content than Arabica beans. Caffeine is part of what makes the Robusta plant so robust, but it is up to the coffee drinker and his consumers to understand this stimulant’s effect, as all coffee beans contain a high content.
Arabicas, on the other hand, contain less caffeine and tend to be of higher quality, so they contain less caffeine but are more nutritious than their more expensive counterparts. Want to enjoy the delicious flavor anyway but don’t want the effects of caffeine? The Swiss water-processed Columbian Decaf blend from Jimmy Grindz will bring you a clean taste with honey and cocoa flavors.
The green beans are roasted on a scale from light to dark, giving us the coffee beans we know and love. Coffee beans that have been roasted for a longer period are less dense but still dense than coffee beans that have not been roasted for that long. If they are immature, they will not make a good cup of coffee, but they will cause a bad taste in your mouth, and they can change your taste for coffee when you buy them.
